Stuart Hamblen has an old country song entitled, “This Ole House’ which in so many ways echoed our time in Indian Trails Estates!
The song’s chorus goes like this:
Ain’t gonna need this house no longer
Ain't gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain’t got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the window-pane
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm gettin' ready to meet the saints
‘We were last in Indian Trails just as 2020 came around and brought with it – Covid! Well, the old house we worked on needed us then and was waiting for us now as well. Impact Cares came and did much on work on the ‘old house,’ from skirting to painting to roof, to floors, to outlets, to some ‘loss of structural integrity’ in the walls – also known as ‘rot.’
We had some great help as we came back to the ‘Heights’ as the locals call the town. This is probably the newest of all the towns we have ever been to, only having been incorporated in September of 1960. The ‘Heights’ is close to an Army base and has grown with it over the years. We met some great people here as we always do. One of the residents, recently moved here, just loved to volunteer, and had his own painting business. Guess what we let him do? That’s right, he could paint like nobody’s business. One hour the house would be unpainted and the next thing you knew, it was all painted!
When you run across folks who love to pitch in and use their God-given gifts and abilities, it always makes the projects and work seem so much easier and lighter. My mother used to say, “Many hands make light work!’ And so, it is.
Across America, no matter where one travels, you will come across a number of things that are common to almost any place you land. One is the people, great people who love to serve, pitch in, and help in any way they can. When communities have these types of folks in them, somehow the community seems more pleasant, a better place to live. The other thing you will often run across is places like the song says, ‘it needs shingles, the windowpane fixed, the hinges oiled and the floor fixed. Old houses, which are real and need help are often accompanied by real, often needing help folks who often, through no fault of their own, live in an equally, ‘needs-fixin’ ole house. Now you put these two together, the down home, pitch in and help folks and the ole houses and it becomes a win-win situation! Not only are the hearts of the folks who are helping blessed and enlarged but the actual ‘ole house’ gets a fixin’ up and the folks who live in them are blessed and encouraged as well.
That, my friends, is what Impact Cares is all about – putting those two ingredients together and in small ways making the world a better place!